


The Trial of Charlotte Yaxley Dreemurr

by urami



Series: Hometown Urban Legends [2]
Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Chara (Undertale), Character Death, F/M, Female Chara (Undertale), Ghost Stories, Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Period Typical Attitudes, Puritans, Violence against pregnant women, Witch Hunts, history books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:54:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29454144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urami/pseuds/urami
Summary: Part of theOld Folkloreuniverse.In an old book, Susie learns about the dark history of the Mt. Ebott area, and that there may be something to the old story of a furious ghost haunting the area. Humans can be cruel, even to their own kind. But there's not really a witch's ghost under the mountain, is there?
Relationships: Chara/Asriel Dreemurr
Series: Hometown Urban Legends [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622482
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	The Trial of Charlotte Yaxley Dreemurr

**Author's Note:**

> It’s finally here, the first side story in the Old Folklore universe! These are stories that will tie into the original story, to explain some of the old stories about the evil spirit that Noelle releases into the real world in the main story. The monsters of Hometown have a variety of stories about a powerful spirit that haunts the town and will eventually cause the end of the world, but no one is entirely sure as to the circumstances. This is one of the theories. 
> 
> While I’d recommend reading at least the first few chapters of Old Folklore to sort of understand what’s going on, you can read this first and it will make sense still. As in the main storyline, please be aware that this will also contain scenes of fairly graphic violence. Reader discretion is advised. Please read the tags before continuing.

“It’s only for a few days,” the rabbit-like social worker said bracingly to the young girl standing next to her. The lizard girl was looking skeptically at the building in front of her. The faded sign above the door read “Gerson’s Antique Shop,” but looking at the piles of stuff in the window, she felt that “junk shop” would have been a better name for it. 

“You’ll only be here for a few days, maybe a week at most, until we can find someone else to take you in on a more permanent basis,” the social worker continued. “Try to behave this time, please. It’s hard enough to find someone willing to look after you given the circumstances. It’s even harder when you intentionally cause trouble.” 

‘I didn’t mean to break the plates,” the girl mumbled under her breath. 

“Lemon Bread had already told you to not touch anything in the kitchen! She said she had been _very_ clear on that!” 

“What was I supposed to do? Eat the food off the damn floor?” 

“Watch your mouth,” the social worker snapped, almost reflexively, then sighed. “Just… just… try to behave this time, alright?” 

Susie grudgingly nodded, face grim. It wasn’t like she went around intentionally trying to cause trouble, but sometimes she had trouble understanding exactly what it was her foster parents wanted her to do. Every family seemed to have different expectations, and it was hard to know one way or another how she was supposed to behave. Honestly, she didn’t much care who she ended up with. She liked it best when her foster parents just left her to her own devices. She was good at taking care of herself. She had to be. Her mother had died when she was quite young, and her father was serving a life sentence for murder in the Hometown County lockup. She was almost ten years old, and she had been more or less on her own since she was six. As far as she was concerned, she could live on her own full-time, but that wasn’t something the adults seemed to find acceptable. 

The social worker knocked on the door, jolting the lizard girl out of her thoughts. A few moments passed, then there was a shuffling sound behind the door. A security chain jingled, `and the door swung open to reveal an elderly turtle monster. 

“Wa hah hah, long time no see, Karen!” the old turtle laughed. “And this must be Susie. Come on in, before you freeze! It’s cold out here today!” 

“Thank you so much for agreeing to take Susie until we can find another home, Mr. Gerson,” Karen the social worker said. “I hope she won’t cause too much trouble for you.” She ended her last sentence by shooting a pointed look at the girl. Susie tried to ignore it. 

“No trouble at all,” Gerson said airily, waving his hand as if to dismiss Karen’s worries. “There’s nothing this whippersnapper could do that I can’t handle! I faced much scarier than just a little girl in the war!” 

“I’m sure you did, Mr. Gerson,” Karen said, a little patronizingly. “In any case, hopefully we’ll find her a permanent placement by the end of this weekend, so you won’t have to be put out too much.” 

“It’s like I said, no trouble at all,” Gerson replied. It might just have been Susie’s imagination, but it seemed as though the old man’s voice had cooled several degrees. “I’ll just have Susie here help me watch the floor while I unpack some items in the back. We just got some new stuff to price, wa hah hah.” 

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Karen said. “Someone will be by later this afternoon with Susie’s suitcase.” 

As soon as Karen left, Gerson ushered Susie deeper into his shop. “It looks like you’re going to be here for a few days so you might as well make yourself comfortable. Feel free to take a look around. I have some work to do in the back. Do you mind staying out here to watch the floor? Let me know if anyone comes in.” 

“Uh. Okay,” Susie replied. 

Gerson laughed. “Good girl. Let me know if you need anything.” Susie watched him walk into the back room, then heard the door click behind him, leaving her alone. 

Aimlessly, she wandered through the shop, taking in the items for sale. A lot of it really was junk, of little to no use to anyone. Several jigsaw puzzles missing multiple pieces. A deck of cards that looked like it had been used a thousand times. Some torn up plush toys. There was an elaborate wedding dress that looked far too large for any woman, except maybe a female Boss Monster, and next to it, an even larger tuxedo.  A green-and-yellow striped child’s sweater covered in a fine layer of dust sent chills down Susie’s spine for reasons she didn’t quite understand. A pair of Boss Monster sized wedding rings. A battered set of female armor. A dusty, tattered red scarf and a blue hoodie marred by what looked like a stab wound also lay forlornly among the random items. 

Something about those items filled Susie with a dread she didn’t quite understand, so she didn’t spend a lot of time examining them. A lot of the rest of stuff was pretty boring, but it didn’t cause a feeling of terror to well up in her soul, so she leisurely examined them. A box of pens with varying degrees of ink left in them. Disembodied computer equipment. Old textbooks and manga. Some junky jewelry. And old clothes and shoes, none of which caught her interest. Until she noticed something that didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of it. 

It was a wedding dress, but it was sized differently, and it looked old. Far older than the Boss Monster-sized one she’d seen earlier, and with different proportions. It was much more fitted at the waist, and had a more generously sized chest than most dresses Susie had seen. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she would have said it was sized for a human woman. Monster women tended to have a more rectangular silhouette than human women did, who tended to be hourglass-shaped. This dress was certainly designed for someone with a larger bust and hip than almost any monster woman Susie knew. 

It was a beautiful piece of tailoring, though, even despite its readily apparent age. The bodice was embroidered with small seed beads in the pattern of the Delta Rune, and though it was yellowed and worn, the lace around the neck and hemline was clearly of high quality, apparent even to someone with almost no knowledge of  fashion like Susie. Next to the dress was a small table holding a jewelry box, and an old book. Curiously, Susie opened the box to see that it was a human-sized wedding ring. A simple gold band adorned with a large pearl, the Delta Rune was engraved on the outside of the band. On the inside, the words “My Chara” were engraved. 

Her curiosity even more piqued, Susie picked up the book that was under the jewelry box. Like the other items, it was old, although of a more recent vintage. It was well-worn, and yellowed with age. The title of the book was “The People vs. Charlotte Yaxley Dreemurr.” 

_Dreemurr? Like Asgore and Ms. Toriel?_ She thought. 

Gently, she made her way to a old couch in the corner of the shop and began to read. 

_While the Mt. Ebbot area was fortunate to avoid most of the witch hunt hysteria that gripped Salem, Massachusetts ,and most of Europe during the 17_ _th_ _century, one incident remains a black mark on our history: the trial and subsequent execution of Charlotte Yaxley Dreemurr, who was accused of witchcraft and of sexual congress with the Devil himself. It was even believed at the time_ _she was executed she was pregnant with the spawn of Satan…_

* * *

_October 1692_

Charlotte Yaxley had always been an odd  duck, pastor Nathaniel Anderson had thought, as he watched the woman walk into the dry goods store. Actually, the whole Yaxley bloodline was quite strange. Old Matthew Yaxley had always been an antisocial drunk, and his wife Silence was rather neurotic, going to to the town doctor almost every week while they’d lived in town, complaining of a different ailment each time.When they’d moved out to the far side of the Ebbot Forest, people had thought they were insane, but nobody really mourned the loss of their company. If anything, people had worried about their young daughter Charlotte being so far away from the civilizing influence of the local church, but overall, nobody had cared that much. Ebbot Town was better off without them. 

Then, when the fever had swept through the area fifteen years prior, and nobody had seen hide nor hair of the Yaxley family, most of the town assumed they had succumbed. A few years after that, a hunter had found two adult skeletons, most likely that of Matthew and Silence. Charlotte, most people believed, had probably been dragged off by a mountain lion or something. Pastor Anderson had held a funeral for all three of them, buried the two bodies, and the people of Ebbot Town had moved on with their lives. It wasn’t uncommon for entire families to be wiped out from disease, after all. That was the risk you took when you agreed to live on the frontier. 

But a few months ago, a strange woman had reappeared in town, claiming to be Charlotte Yaxley. She was in her twenties, which would have made her the right age to be the girl who had disappeared so long ago. And her looks were about right too- she had the same unsettling red eyes that Matthew Yaxley had had, and the same flushed complexion that made her look like she constantly had a fever that Silence Yaxley had been known for.  When people asked how she’d made it to adulthood, considering she would have been around ten years old when her parents died, she said she’d survived the fever that had taken her biological parents, and then had been taken in by the local native tribe that lived on the other side of the mountain. When asked why she had come back now, Charlotte had replied that she wished to re-integrate herself into society, and that she wished to make and sell medicines for the good of the town. Her adoptive parents, she said, had taught her what plants in the area were good for various ailments, and that their herbal knowledge had helped nurse her back to health. Most people took her words at face value, and there even seemed to be some truth to them. 

When Elizabeth Vynall had miscarried her twins in August, a drink that Charlotte Yaxley had given to her helped restore her strength much more quickly than anything Dr. Batcock had been able to do for her. The same thing had happened when old Ezekiel Cromwell’s diabetes had been acting up. Dr. Batcock had suspected that he would likely slip into a coma and die within the next few weeks. Yaxley, however, had presented him with a pill that  the old man had said made him feel like he was in his thirties again. And again when three-year-old Tribulation Tyler had been overcome with fits- nothing Dr. Batcock did seemed to make a difference. Charlotte Yaxley, on the other hand, had given him cake, of all things, and the toddler seemed to become right as rain  at once. 

Nathaniel Anderson did not trust the woman. 

Not only was she using methods he did not understand, that appeared to have been taught to her by the heathens, she often did not ask for anything in return more than a hot meal, or simple household items. And despite repeated requests by the people of Ebbot Town, she refused to move back into the town limits. She claimed she had her own house, the one her father had built, in the forest, and that she had no desire to return to the town. 

“My father built it for us to live in. While he and my mother did not survive, I intend to honor his intentions,” she had said when old Ezekiel Cromwell had asked her. She seemed the very picture of a filial daughter, honoring even her deceased parents’ intentions. 

Nathaniel Anderson did not trust her. 

He watched from the shadows as she completed  her transaction at the general store. Her purchases seemed normal- flour, a bolt of broadcloth, some seeds (was she planting crops?),  dried meat, and cotton yarn. But she also spent quite a lot of money on a rare delicacy from the southern continent, a “Chocolate Bar.” That immediately made Pastor Anderson even more suspicious than he already was. He frowned upon sweets on general principal, especially ones that were so expensive. That money could have been given to someone who needed it, and not spent on indulging one strange woman’s carnal desires. 

Still hiding in the shadows, he watched as Yaxley left the shop and hurried down the path  into the forest. Was it his imagination, or did Yaxley seem thicker around the middle than a maiden should? In fact, the more he thought about it, the more Anderson became convinced that the woman was pregnant. The way her dress clung oddly to her midsection, the way she sort of clutched at her belly when she moved… all only served to make the man more certain of his determination. 

Charlotte Yaxley was not married, at least not married in the church. Who knew what sort of bizarre ritual she had engaged in with the local tribespeople? But as far as Nathaniel Anderson was concerned, Yaxley was pregnant with a bastard. Once he made that fact known to the town, her side business of “curing” the locals with her witchcraft would be put to bed. It was for the best. Who knew what the creepy woman was doing to them? Who knew what sort of heathen gods she was calling on to work her craft? 

But then, a little voice in the back of his head said, what if she wasn’t pregnant? What if she had just gained weight? He would look like a fool, and if she actually was just a chaste, unmarried woman who happened to live outside of town, the people might turn on him.  She  _had_ saved a number of their lives with her potions, after all. And that was unacceptable. He needed to keep his flock under control. If they lost their fear of God, and of him, who knew what kind of anarchy would ensue? What he needed was proof that the woman was living in sin. And if he followed her home, he might be able to do that. 

Taking great care to make sure that Yaxley wouldn’t see him,  Nathaniel c rept behind the woman, following her deep into the forest. At one point, she stepped off the path, breathing a little heavily, to cradle her stomach. He heard her mutter something to herself, but he couldn’t make it out. Eventually, she came to a small cottage deep in the woods. Hiding behind a large yew tree, Anderson watched the woman open the door and call out. “Dear. I’m back from town!” 

Nathaniel watched in horror as a large, goat-like creature with wickedly sharp horns in some sort of frock filled the doorway and embraced the human woman. “How was it? Did anyone ask you for help today?” 

“No, not today, but Tribulation Tyler and his mother stopped me to thank me again. Sarah Tyler tried to give me some of her terrible biscuits again. Would it kill her to take them out of her oven before they are charcoal?” 

The monstrous creature laughed. “Be nice, Chara. She means no harm.” 

Yaxley sighed, a small smile adorning her lips. “She does not. But I had to eat them to be polite. Your son does not seem to care for them much.”  Here she touched her stomach, and the creature laid a monstrous paw on top of her hand. Nathaniel shuddered. How could she stand a demon touching her so intimately? At least this gave him some proof that she was pregnant. 

“Go inside, dear. I prepared supper for us while you were out- Mom’s butterscotch chess pie.” 

"Aw yeah!” Yaxley cheered. “It has been so long!” 

Four hours, Nathaniel waited. Through the window, he watched the monster and Yaxley go about their evening routine. It was disgusting how normal it was. They ate dinner, sat by the fire while Yaxley knitted and the creature read a book. He watched the monster and Yaxley change into their nightclothes and crawl into bed together. He watched in horrified disgust as Yaxley peppered little kisses on the monster’s jaw, and he struggled to keep from vomiting when the monster reached a massive paw up between Yaxley’s legs, under her nightgown. The woman giggled, playfully swatting at the thing. 

“I am already pregnant, Asriel!” 

“What does that matter?” 

“Oh, behave!” 

“But you don’t want me to, do you? You didn’t seem to complain that night, Chara!” 

“I will tell your mother!” 

That was all Nathaniel needed. This woman had defiled herself with a creature that looked like Baphomet himself, and had all but confirmed she was carrying its half-human devil spawn in her womb. He would need no further proof. For the sake of Ebbot Town, he would have to kill the witch and her… paramour. 

Loading a shot into his pistol, Nathaniel barged into the cottage through the front door, ignoring the shouts of outrage from the occupants. Aiming his gun directly at the creature, he pulled the trigger, then watched as the bullet tore through the thing’s body as though it were made of paper. There was barely time for surprise to register on the being’s face, before it exploded into a thousand shards of dust. 

“MURDERER!” Yaxley screamed, her face contorting into a rictus of rage. She ran towards Nathaniel blindly, as though she would beat him to death with her own fists, but he was stronger than she was and quickly overpowered her.. 

* * *

... _That night, Nathaniel Anderson dragged Charlotte Yaxley back into the town and convened a court of the town elders the next day. She was charged with witchcraft, with having sexual intercourse with demons, and with poisoning the town’s residents. She defended herself, claiming that Anderson had been hallucinating, broke into her house, and assaulted her. She attempted to plead her belly_ _to prevent execution_ _, claiming that she was, in fact, pregnant,_ _but that she was pregnant as the result of a sexual assault perpetrated by Anderson himself. This was not accepted. She was sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead, the very next day._

_As she was led up the scaffold to the gallows, she maintained a grim determination. As the noose was put around her neck, she announced to everyone gathered to witness her death: “My name is Chara Dreemurr. By this act, you have chosen to erase your own pointless world, as I move on to the next. Remember this.” Nobody is entirely sure what this means- although it is theorized that the man Nathaniel Anderson claimed to have killed carried the surname Dreemurr._

_Yaxley’s body was left on the gibbet for three days, until the local undertaker took her remains down and removed a ring from her ring finger, which he pawned. The ring has been lost.She was buried in an unmarked, unconsecrated grave under Mt. Ebbot. The exact site was lost._

_A subsequent search of the cottage site revealed quite a lot of dust, oversized men’s clothing, and a wedding dress beaded with a strange emblem. No body was ever recovered of the “creature” that Anderson claimed to have shot, nor any human remains._

_As an aside, within a year, Nathaniel Anderson was found dead in his church, his genitals mangled. No one was ever arrested or charged with the crime. Some of the more superstitious folk in the town believed their preacher’s death was the result of Yaxley’s enraged spirit reaching out from the beyond to exact revenge on the man responsible for her death, who was accused of raping her while she was in his custody. While this is impossible to prove, it should be noted that over the years, Ebbot Town, and later, Ebbot City, have been the site of a number of gruesome, unsolved murders._

Susie let the book rest on her lap, her eyelids heavy. The story had been a lot to take in, and extremely disturbing. Charlotte Yaxley, and her husband (an ancestor of the Dreemurr family, maybe?) hadn’t seemed to have done anything wrong, and yet they had been murdered in such a bad way. Were humans that superstitious and violent that they’d execute a pregnant woman for being pregnant while not married? Or for being pregnant with a monster’s child? Was that even possible? They’d only barely covered the basics of monster reproduction in her classes at school. Susie wasn’t actually sure that a monster and a human could even conceive a child?

On the other hand, it made a disturbing amount of sense. There were scary stories every monster heard around a campfire about the evil spirit of a human witch who’d been buried in an unmarked grave under the mountain. If this was what had happened to the witch while she was alive, no wonder she was evil! Of course she would claw her way back from the human afterlife to haunt those she felt had wronged her.

Letting the book slip from her grasp, Susie fell into a fitful, restless sleep, haunted by dreams of Puritan-era pastors, pregnant women with the life slowly fading from their eyes, and dissolving Boss Monsters.

Eventually, Gerson came out of the office. Slowly making his way through his shop, he noticed Susie snoozing on an old sofa. Smiling softly, he pulled a blanket out of a box nearby and draped it across her shoulders. Then, he noticed the discarded book lying on the floor. The smile slowly slipped off his face, and carefully, he picked up the book and placed it back on the table next to the sofa.

“Someone else knows, now, Chara. Please, rest now.”

/END

**Author's Note:**

> I've been planning these side stories for about a year now, but 2020 was such a clusterfuck (and 2021 isn't shaping up to be any better so far) that it just killed my desire to write.
> 
> During the earlier part of the quarantine, I got sort of obsessed with the Salem witch trials. That was a major inspiration behind this story. As to whether or not the Chara depicted here is the real spirit in the main storyline, you'll have to wait to find that out- hopefully without waiting too long! But keep in mind, there are a few other theories as to where the ghost comes from in the main story. Those will be coming soon. It's up to you to decide what you think really happened up until then! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
